In a Race With China, German Robots Are Outnumbered 14 to 1

Once a symbol of German industrial innovation, the robot maker Kuka is now a source of regret.A decade ago, European regulators gave a Chinese appliance manufacturer, Midea, the green light to acquire Kuka, one of Germany’s leading robotics companies.Today Germany is failing to keep pace in the global race to deploy factory robots, which have been crucial to China’s transformation into the world’s manufacturing powerhouse.

The number of robot installations in German factories is forecast to fall for the third straight year, while China’s rollout intensifies, according to the International Federation of Robotics, a trade group.The widening gap exemplifies the growing economic threat that China poses to Germany and Europe as a whole.A flood of low-cost cars, chemicals and machinery from China has hollowed out Europe’s factories, contributing to the loss of about 14,000 industrial jobs a month in Germany and fueling calls for tougher trade measures on Beijing.The European Union’s trade deficit with China is tolling at 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) a day, its largest ever.China’s push into robotics and artificial intelligence is adding to the pressure.China’s robotics sector “has accelerated incredibly rapidly,” said Rebecca Arcesati, a technology and innovation policy specialist at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Brussels.

“We hear from European firms in this space that they are quite concerned about the growing competition.”Since calling for a robot revolution in 2014, China has embarked on an ambitious campaign to disrupt manufacturing and dominate the field.Today, almost half of the five million robots working in factories worldwide are in China, the trade group estimated in a report released on Thursday.One worry is that China’s bets on those technologies could further strengthen its manufacturing sector, accelerating the trade imbalance between China and the European Union, Ms.

Arcesati said.As Ursula von der Leyen, the p...